The oldest inhabitants on record are John Taylor, of Garrigall, who died in 1772, aged 132 years, and Mr. R. Bowman, of Irthington, who died June 13, 1823, aged 118 years.  The oldest oak tree in Cumberland of which there is any record—­a tree which had stood for 600 years in Wragmire Moss, Inglewood Forest—­fell from natural decay on the day of Mr. Bowman’s demise.

Cumberland is wholly in the diocese of Carlisle, with the exception of the wood of Allerdale-above-Derwent, in the diocese of Chester, and the parish of Alston, in that of Durham.  It contains 104 parishes.  It is comprehended in the province of York, and in the northern circuit.  The assizes are held at Carlisle twice a-year.  The principal coach roads in Westmoreland are the old mail road from Lancaster to Carlisle and Glasgow; and the road (formerly a mail road) through Stamford, Newark, Doncaster, and Greta Bridge, to Carlisle and Glasgow.  There is a second road from Lancaster to Kendal, through Milnthorp.  Roads lead from Kendal south-westward to Ulverston and Dalton-in-Furness; westward to Bowness, and across Windermere by the ferry to Hawkshead, and Coniston Water in Furness, and to Egremont and Whitehaven in Cumberland; north-westward by Ambleside to Keswick, Cockermouth, and Workington, in Cumberland; north-eastward by Orton to Appleby, with a branch road to Kirkby Stephen to Brough; eastward to Sedbergh, and onwards to Yorkshire.

The railways in the district are, the Preston and Carlisle, the Kendal and Windermere, the Cockermouth and Workington, the Furness (between Fleetwood, Furness Abbey, Ulverston, Broughton, and the Lakes), the Maryport and Carlisle, Whitehaven Junction, and Whitehaven and Furness Junction (between Whitehaven, Ravenglass, Bootle, and Broughton).

Wordsworth, whose soul, as well as body, was identified with this district, says of the mountains of Westmoreland, that “in magnitude and grandeur they are individually inferior to the most celebrated of those in some other parts of the island; but in the combinations which they make, towering above each other, or lifting themselves in ridges like the waves of a tumultuous sea, and in the beauty and variety of their surfaces and colours, they are surpassed by none.”

The lakes are numerous, beautiful, and extensive in size.  Ulleswater is embosomed in the centre of mountains, of which Helvellyn forms part.  The upper part of it belongs wholly to Westmoreland, while its lower part, on the border of Cumberland and Westmoreland, is about seven miles long, with an average breadth of half a mile.  The higher portion of the lake is in Patterdale.  Haweswater is formed by the expansion of the Mardale-beck; and all the larger affluents of the Eden, which join it on the left bank, rise on the northern slope of the Cumbrian ridge.  The river Leven, which flows out of Windermere, belongs to Lancashire; but the Rothay, or Raise-beck, which drains the valley of Grasmere, the streams which